A Myth to the Night
Text Copyright © 2014 Cora Choi
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Part I
Chapter One: Stauros Island
I will always remember the day I arrived on Stauros Island. It was six years before the massacre, and my thirteenth birthday had just passed. Before I left home, my father had told me to present myself to the monks of Stauros Abbey in a learned and dignified manner, for they were part of the Order of the Crane, the wisest and most scholarly order of monks in the world, and it was important that I make a good first impression. I had nothing else to offer. I was only a peasant boy without pedigree. Nor did I have any education, except for what I had taught myself.
“You’re lucky that the head abbot has agreed to even take you in. Be grateful and learn well what they teach you,” my father said.
I set off for the abbey in the autumn of 1609. My hometown was not far from Stauros Island so the journey only took half a day. As the sun was about to set, the turrets and flying buttresses of the abbey came into view. The sky was filled with a cascade of oranges, reds, and purples in the sky.
I was practicing a short presentation, talking to myself as I crossed the causeway of the Stauros Sea, not noticing the rising water around me which was threatening to flood the dirt path I was walking on. Only when I heard an iron gate screech open did I lift my head and realize that I was standing at the entrance of Stauros—the only opening in the stone wall that wreathed the island.
“Hurry, before the tide comes in!” warned a hunched-over servant in a brown-gray bonnet. An apron of the same color clung to her front. She held on to the handle of a small rusted lantern that creaked as it swayed back and forth in front of my face. I wanted to deliver my speech, but my nerves took over my tongue and nothing came forth.
“The new apprentice, you are.”
She stated what I should’ve said. I just nodded. Her voice, grainy, blended in with the sound of the rushing waves behind me. She was too bent over for me to see her face, but from her voice, and the way she spoke, I surmised that she was older than my father, and that was indeed old. She pulled my sleeve and directed me through the pointed archway of the entrance and slammed the iron gate. She shut three more doors, two iron and one wood, before she turned to me.
“You came when needed. Abbot Pellanor has much work,” she said. “He sits at his desk day and night reading about a certain myth—a kind of prophecy.”
“Will I-I be helping him with this . . . this prophetic myth?” I asked, eager to know what my duties would be.
She tilted her head so that only one eye peered out from under her bonnet. She chuckled silently.
“Helping? I’m sure you’ll be doing more than just helping.” She turned away and started walking up a sinuous green-tinted cobblestone road. The unfamiliarity of my surroundings rendered me stiff. I stood where I was, and just trailed the road with my eyes seeing how it swerved all the way up to the looming abbey at the top.
“The Five Ring Road doesn’t lead to hell,” she reassured me and beckoned. I followed her silently, my eyes taking in every detail. As I walked further I began to relax. Vibrant flowers seemed to reach out to me as they swayed with the evening wind. They came in hues as dark as blood and as bright as the harvest full moon, their leaves and stems, a glowing emerald green. Some were covered with a light fuzz that looked as soft as velvet. Majestic trees stood facing the sea like alert sentinels, their maroon bark deepening to mahogany in the twilight.
We rounded a bend and I saw other boys my age, with short cut hair in plain brown cassocks. Each of them carried a book under his arm or in his hand. They were lost in discussions with one another, some of which I overheard. One quartet stood arguing about the land of origin of the headless knight. Another two were discussing Ravana, the legendary ten-headed king from India, and I wondered if there were equivalents found in stories from other areas of the world. I wanted to jump in and tell them what I knew about these myths and other ancient tales, too.
Many of them held up flaming torches that poured a copper sheen onto the path. As I passed by, all of them stared, and a few of them even nodded at me. I felt my steps getting lighter.
“Are these apprentices?” I asked, excited at all the new friends I might soon have.
“They are, and you will join them,” said the servant. “They spend their days and nights reading the stories in the library, you too will have to memorize all the stories in the library and know them inside and out. And once you’ve finished, you will take on the duties of the monks of the Order of the Crane and travel to every town and village and share.”
“Share what?”
“Stories.”
“Why?”
“People need stories. They’re like bread and water.”
I didn’t understand what she meant, but her comment forced me to recall a monk who came to our village square every full moon. My brothers and I would end our chores early to make sure we could hear his stories, for they were brilliant. Some of them were about finding buried treasures in deserts, or about heroes rescuing maidens in abandoned chateaus. My favorite ones were about phantoms helping living souls in need. When my brothers and I would come back from hearing the monk’s stories we would often make up our own, using Stauros Island as the backdrop. My stories always had a character who haunted the island.
I was timid by nature, especially around strangers. But because it was my first time away from home, or perhaps because I suddenly remembered those stories, I boldly put forth a question.
“Does this island have any ghosts?”
The servant paused but didn’t turn around. She began walking again and spoke in her withered voice that sounded like the Stauros Sea itself. “There’s an old legend that says that the first person to inhabit Stauros Island was a ghost—a being who so loved the land and sea that he could not bear to leave it and go into the afterworld. He wanted to find a special place—a secret place—where he could always hear the waves and smell the fresh dirt beneath him.”
“So there are ghosts here,” I said, my heart racing as my fantastical stories came alive before my eyes.
She ignored my comment. “He traveled to the edge of each ocean and to the peak of every mountain to find a piece of land that would be his eternal home. One night, he came to a small island surrounded by a turbulent sea. He waited until dawn, when he hoped the tide would recede. To his amazement, the tide didn’t just wash back out to sea, it left a lump of sand that became a causeway connecting the island to the mainland.
“He discovered that the sea around the island did not follow the regular rules of time and tide. Instead of twice a day, low tide only happened once. By sunset, the water would begin rushing in and cover the causeway, separating the island from the mainland throughout the night. The waves would crash mercilessly around the island until dawn. By sunrise, the waters would start to calm down, the turbulence lessening little by little. In the afternoon, the causeway would show itself again.
“Enchanted by this mystery of nature, the ghost decided to build a monument on the peak to celebrate its uniqueness. Using the rocks and mud found around him, he built an odd labyrinth full of towers and winding stairs. When the first farmers began to settle the mainland a couple thousand years back, they saw this structure from afar and said it was the gateway to the spirit world. They believed that whoever entered it was leaving the material world for the spiritual one. The monument became mo
re well-known than the island and was given the name Stauros—a cross between the living world and the dead.
“Another five hundred years would pass before the first members of the Order of the Crane would claim the island as the seat of their order and build an abbey around the ghost’s monument. The monks began collecting and categorizing every book that contained a story worth reading. They soon carved out a library in the middle of the abbey that descended through the gut of the island.
“Thirteen underground floors now house books collected from every corner of the earth. Kings and wise men travel months, even years, to come and have a look at the great library. You will see. Stauros is the home of myths and legends.”
She stopped. I looked at her, wanting to hear more. She looked back at me, waiting. “We’ve arrived,” she finally said.
I saw that we stood at the foot of the giant medieval abbey. The stars, like diamond highlights piercing through the darkness, spotlighted the flying buttresses and traceries. A lancet arch yawned before me, framing an entry leading into a vast unknown, another universe waiting to be discovered. Two life-size carved statues of cranes stood on either side of the arches.
“The home of the Order of the Crane is now your home,” she said. “You’ll find Abbot Pellanor inside waiting for you.”